FIAZ Munshi has been accused of telling an “outrageous lie” by claiming she did not know about an arson attack which killed two children.

The 38-year-old continued giving evidence in Oxford Crown Court yesterday as she was cross examined by prosecutor Neil Moore.

He suggested that she was the “brains” behind the fire, which was started in Magdalen Road, East Oxford, on August 26, 1997.

Munshi was not arrested until last year because she left for Pakistan after the attack and did not return to the UK until 2004.

On the night of the fire she admits travelling with her then-boyfriend Haq Nawaz – one of five people handed life sentences in 1998 for the murders of Anum Khan, eight, and her brother Majid, 15. But she denies the murders telling the jury she thought she was going to take part in a fight.

Mr Moore said: “You say you got back (from Oxford) unaware that anything had happened. That is a lie, it is an outrageous lie, I suggest.”

Munshi answered: “It is not a lie, it is correct.”

The barrister asked what Munshi saw in a 6ft 3ins tall “thug” like Nawaz, who has been described as a dangerous heroin dealer.

She told him: “He helped us, I didn’t know what he was really like.”

But Mr Moore told her: “You were the brains and he was the brawn and that was what you saw in him.

“You saw a means of getting your revenge.

“He organised the trip that night and it was inconceivable that you didn’t know about it.”

Munshi, of Manley Road, Oldham, said: “No. If I had known I never would have gone along with it.”

The prosecutor said Munshi wanted revenge because the family was “interfering” by trying to stop her seeing her ex-partner Amjad Khan, a brother of the two fire victims who was jailed for dealing heroin.

But she said the murders were “all to do with drugs”.

She said the family were “all into drugs” at which point Mr Moore described her as a “fantasist”.

The trial continues.

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